The money we collect this evening will go to the suport group of Javier, see below for more info:

Two years in jail and 7,500 euro fine for recording racist police round-up

On March 17th 2012, Javier, a member of the 15-M movement and the CNT Union, was arrested while filming a racist round-up in Lavapiés, Madrid.

In the coming weeks we will know the exact date of the trial, scheduled for the spring, in which the state prosecutor and the private attorney of one of the officers who assaulted him during his detention charge our comrade with resisting arrest and assault & battery, crimes punishable with two years in prison and civil penalty of more than 7,500 euro.

The events for which he will go to trial occurred almost four years ago, when a spontaneous demonstration of neighbors tried to publicly denounce the umpteenth racist police raid in the streets of Lavapiés. Peaceful demonstrations like this had already occurred several times in that neighborhood and other quarters with high migrant populations such as Carabanchel, showing that residents had grown weary of the constant police harassment of migrant workers, who suffer identity checks on a daily basis
merely for having a dark skin color.

Although successive Spanish governments have been reproached for these raids by organizations which are far from revolutionary, such as the EU, the UN, and Amnesty International, they are still occurring every day in the public spaces of our city, with the active collaboration of the Madrid municipal police and private security agents on the subway, commuter trains, etc. They intend to fill the quota for people without residence permits which the Spanish Interior Ministry requires of police department to satisfy their goal of human bodies in their cells, their Immigrant Detention Centers and on
their deportation flights, and at the same time, to incite to hatred and divide the native and foreign sections of the working class.

March 17, 2012 was a turning point in escalating repression against neighborhood anti-racist self-organization. An unprecedented police deployment and the subsequent police set-up of our comrade Javier tried to put an end to these spontaneous and peaceful demonstrations of solidarity
which were marked by chants of “No human being is illegal!”. The authorities want to put an end to the emerging solidarity movement against the scourge of ethnic identity checks and subsequent arrests (kidnapping) of neighbors whose only “crime” was to be migrants, poor and to have lost or failed to complete the administrative process to establish their legal residence in our neighborhoods.

The Assembly of Lavapies is taking the opportunity of this new political trial to appeal for solidarity with our comrade and to renew the fight against racist police controls and raids. Watch out for updated information on the trial and support grassroots organizing, without leaders. Don’t let the police continue to undermine coexistence in our neighborhoods with their racist practices.

No human being is illegal!
Racists aren’t welcome in our neighborhoods!!

A interview with Javier, in 2012 about the arrest and the situation in Lavapies-Madrid (in Spanish)